Installing Windows 11 - 24H2 to a VHD or VHDX no longer works

Bree · Oct 20, 2024

cereberus said:
2) Due to an annoying change in oobe, it automatically installs updates to .2033 update but you can uninstall the update.

In fact, MS have updated the Media Creation Tool and it now makes a 26100.2033 ISO/USB. The directly downloaded ISO is still 26100.1742 (for now).

(And yes, I have tested the 26100.2033 MCT USB and it still fails to install to a .vhdx.)

cereberus · Oct 20, 2024

Bree said:
In fact, MS have updated the Media Creation Tool and it now makes a 26100.2033 ISO/USB. The directly downloaded ISO is still 26100.1742 (for now).

(And yes, I have tested the 26100.2033 MCT USB and it still fails to install to a .vhdx.)

The problem is the development team now force the updates to be installed at oobe so you end up with .2033 regardless. Previously you could skip the update stage. This is a bad change as it takes ages. Before you could go through oobe promptly and do updates later.

Bree · Oct 20, 2024

cereberus said:
The problem is the development team now force the updates to be installed at oobe so you end up with .2033 regardless. Previously you could skip the update stage.

It cant update if you don't connect, tried it with oobe\bypassnro?

cereberus · Oct 20, 2024

Bree said:
It cant update if you don't connect, tried it with oobe\bypassnro?

Yeah but we are caught in a trap. We cannot install to host vhdx due to bug but oobe bypass would do the trick.

I do not know how you can get to a command prompt when installing in a vm during oobe as shift+f10 would have to be transmitted to vm from host.

Any ideas?

Bree · Oct 20, 2024

cereberus said:
Yeah but we are caught in a trap. We cannot install to host vhdx due to bug but oobe bypass would do the trick.

I do not know how you can get to a command prompt when installing in a vm during oobe as shift+f10 would have to be transmitted to vm from host.

Any ideas?

I've not been testing on a VM, I've been using a physical machine with the vhdx file on an external usb SSD.

I've finally got 24H2 to successfully install to a vhdx. The trick was to switch to the previous version of Setup. So it seems more likely that there's a bug in the new Setup, not a deliberate block on using a vhdx.

There were a few issues though. The first was that the old version of Setup wouldn't allow me to install to a mounted vhdx that was on on an external drive. It complained that you can't install Windows on a removable drive (not sure how it knew that).

So I started again with a vhdx on the machine's own C: drive. This time in the command prompt I couldn't see the internal drive to find my vhdx. Diskpart's 'list volume' showed that the original C: partition had no drive letter assigned, so I had to select the volume and assign it one. Now I could tell Diskpart the path to select the vhdx file.

Finally when 24H2 had been installed to the vhdx and was running, Disk Management showed that the vhdx drive only contained one partition, the one for C: Windows. It was obviously using the internal drive's own EFI partition to boot from (and had probably updated it too). As such, the vhdx install was listed on the boot menu with a conventional Windows icon, not the vhd one.

I've deleted it all now and will be restoring my original efi partition from a Reflect image as a precaution.

..........................

Edit: You can see that both the EFI partition and the Recovery partition must have been updated by the 24H2 install, they both contain more data than those of the original 23H2 image. I have now restored both of them. (BTW: this was my first time restoring a Reflect X image)

hsehestedt · Oct 20, 2024

I don't know why this is so difficult. I can install to a VHD, including doing OOBE\BYPASSNRO and go from start to fully installed in probably between 5 to 10 minutes.

In fact, I scripted the process as well so that probably brings it down to the low side of the estimate (5 minutes).

Easy!

I've done this on a minimum of 5 different machines now and have never once had a difficulty with it.

pseymour · Oct 20, 2024

hsehestedt said:
In fact, I scripted the process as well so that probably brings it down to the low side of the estimate (5 minutes).

Same. My process lets me pick an ISO, it mounts the ISO, I pick an index from the WIM, and I can select a folder of drivers if I need to. Takes a few minutes and I’m ready to go.

cereberus · Oct 21, 2024

Bree said:
I've not been testing on a VM, I've been using a physical machine with the vhdx file on an external usb SSD.

I've finally got 24H2 to successfully install to a vhdx. The trick was to switch to the previous version of Setup. So it seems more likely that there's a bug in the new Setup, not a deliberate block on using a vhdx.

There were a few issues though. The first was that the old version of Setup wouldn't allow me to install to a mounted vhdx that was on on an external drive. It complained that you can't install Windows on a removable drive (not sure how it knew that).

So I started again with a vhdx on the machine's own C: drive. This time in the command prompt I couldn't see the internal drive to find my vhdx. Diskpart's 'list volume' showed that the original C: partition had no drive letter assigned, so I had to select the volume and assign it one. Now I could tell Diskpart the path to select the vhdx file.

Finally when 24H2 had been installed to the vhdx and was running, Disk Management showed that the vhdx drive only contained one partition, the one for C: Windows. It was obviously using the internal drive's own EFI partition to boot from (and had probably updated it too). As such, the vhdx install was listed on the boot menu with a conventional Windows icon, not the vhd one.

I've deleted it all now and will be restoring my original efi partition from a Reflect image as a precaution.

..........................

Edit: You can see that both the EFI partition and the Recovery partition must have been updated by the 24H2 install, they both contain more data than those of the original 23H2 image. I have now restored both of them. (BTW: this was my first time restoring a Reflect X image)

View attachment 113364

Good spot re. previous setup

Re. EFI - that is how it is supposed to work if you do a clean install. As PC has detected an existing OS/EFI, it assumes you want to dual boot.

You could have just removed boot entry using MSCONFIG rather than restoring previous partition but it only takes seconds to do a restore of course.

Re. restoring to a vhdx on external usb drive - were you restoring to a usb hard drive or usb flash drive?

edit: I can confirm previous setup works ok.

Running oobe as local account is so much faster. They have added so much garbage now if you sign in with MS account but forced to do updates is crazy.

Bree · Oct 21, 2024

cereberus said:
Re. restoring to a vhdx on external usb drive - were you restoring to a usb hard drive or usb flash drive?

Not this time. I restored to the PC's own internal SSD from it's latest image. Where I had been using an external drive was just for holding the vhdx that I was trying to install to. That one was an external USB3 SSD.

I've found that native booting a vhdx on an external SSD is almost as fast as having it on an internal drive. In this case I found that 'old Setup' refused to install saying that installing to a removable drive was not allowed, while 'new Setup' was perfectly happy to let me do so.

moopere · Nov 10, 2024

sfernley said:
I've tried to install Windows 11 - 24H2 to a virtual disk VHD file. The installation gets to the end but then reports "Install Failed".

This worked ok on all versions earlier than 24H2. I wonder if it's a bug or intentionally blocked by Microsoft?

This almost drove me to the looney bin.

Turned out to be:

- I build tons of VM's for a home lab and have a powershell script to create a new VM and also create an EFI VHDX to accompany it.
- Win11 24H2, but no other version, will fail at the end of the install with the error message you describe if you have hyper-v setting: Processor -> Compatibility -> Processor compatibility: On (ticked).

Installing to physical was never a problem, but I'm so lazy and had become so used to using my internal VM creation script that it never occurred to me that MS would introduce such an incompatibility.

This is going to be a real issue for anyone wanting to run up Win11 24H2 VM's and also have the capability of live migration to other servers with different generation CPU's - its just not going to work for the most part.

The CPU compatibility setting has worked for many years on any MS OS and any other OS I've ever thrown at it - allowing free movement of running VM's throughout my server farm in a completely ad-hoc and flexible way ... not any more ...

cereberus · Nov 10, 2024

moopere said:
This almost drove me to the looney bin.

Turned out to be:

- I build tons of VM's for a home lab and have a powershell script to create a new VM and also create an EFI VHDX to accompany it.
- Win11 24H2, but no other version, will fail at the end of the install with the error message you describe if you have hyper-v setting: Processor -> Compatibility -> Processor compatibility: On (ticked).

Installing to physical was never a problem, but I'm so lazy and had become so used to using my internal VM creation script that it never occurred to me that MS would introduce such an incompatibility.

This is going to be a real issue for anyone wanting to run up Win11 24H2 VM's and also have the capability of live migration to other servers with different generation CPU's - its just not going to work for the most part.

The CPU compatibility setting has worked for many years on any MS OS and any other OS I've ever thrown at it - allowing free movement of running VM's throughout my server farm in a completely ad-hoc and flexible way ... not any more ...

Didn't you read post #25 by @Bree?

Solution is simple - on 3rd page of installation, click on link to use previous setup.

hsehestedt · Nov 10, 2024

cereberus said:
Didn't you read post #25 by @Bree?

Solution is simple - on 3rd page of oobe, click on link to use previous setup.

I don't get it. I just tried this again right now and it worked flawlessly for me without the need to use the previous setup. On top of that, just to make it even more of a challenge, I created on the VHD on C:\ which is BitLocker encrypted on me system. Even with that added complexity, it still worked perfectly.

The only thing that I can think of that might be different is that because I am a stubborn SOB I steadfastly refuse to use tools like Rufus - I roll my own images.

Once I get some caffeine in me later this morning, maybe I'll try once more using an image created with Rufus to see if this is indeed where the difference is. It's possible that I may delay this until evening. It's Sunday and I plan to avoid the computer as much as possible today

Test Scenario:

Used a 26100.2161 ISO image, using index #6 (the Pro edition of Windows).
Created VHD on C:\ with a size of 100GB as an expanding VHDX file.
C:\ is BitLocker encrypted.

Bree · Nov 10, 2024

hsehestedt said:
I don't get it. I just tried this again right now and it worked flawlessly for me without the need to use the previous setup.....
....Used a 26100.2161 ISO image

Perhaps that's the key, you uses a newer ISO than I did. Maybe MS have fixed the bug in the modern Setup for the latest builds....

Bree said:
I have tested the 26100.2033 MCT USB and it still fails to install to a .vhdx

cereberus · Nov 10, 2024

Bree said:
Perhaps that's the key, you uses a newer ISO than I did. Maybe MS have fixed the bug in the modern Setup for the latest builds....

hsehestedt said:
I don't get it. I just tried this again right now and it worked flawlessly for me without the need to use the previous setup. On top of that, just to make it even more of a challenge, I created on the VHD on C:\ which is BitLocker encrypted on me system. Even with that added complexity, it still worked perfectly.

The only thing that I can think of that might be different is that because I am a stubborn SOB I steadfastly refuse to use tools like Rufus - I roll my own images.

Once I get some caffeine in me later this morning, maybe I'll try once more using an image created with Rufus to see if this is indeed where the difference is. It's possible that I may delay this until evening. It's Sunday and I plan to avoid the computer as much as possible today

Test Scenario:

Used a 26100.2161 ISO image, using index #6 (the Pro edition of Windows).
Created VHD on C:\ with a size of 100GB as an expanding VHDX file.
C:\ is BitLocker encrypted.

How did you get a 26100.2161 iso - from uupdump?

hsehestedt · Nov 10, 2024

cereberus said:
How did you get a 26100.2161 iso - from uupdump?

I built it by myself. I start with a 1742 build, and then I inject the latest updates into it to turn it into 2161.

So I am basically doing what UUP dump does except that I wrote my own program to inject the updates into my windows images. I have absolutely nothing against UUP dump, it is just that I wrote my program before UUP dump was even a thing. I am intimately familiar with the process of injecting updates and my program works so well that I simply continue to use it. It also has the added flexibility of being able to do a lot of things that UUP dump is unable to do. Here is a screenshot of the main menu just to illustrate some of the capabilities:

For this discussion, note menu item #1, to inject updates. That is the one that allows me to build an ISO of newer builds.

Also, menu item #15 is what I use to deploy Windows to a VHD. It simply automates the whole process for me, but it does exactly the steps that you would do manually.

cereberus · Nov 10, 2024

hsehestedt said:
I built it by myself. I start with a 1742 build, and then I inject the latest updates into it to turn it into 2161.

So I am basically doing what UUP dump does except that I wrote my own program to inject the updates into my windows images. I have absolutely nothing against UUP dump, it is just that I wrote my program before UUP dump was even a thing. I am intimately familiar with the process of injecting updates and my program works so well that I simply continue to use it. It also has the added flexibility of being able to do a lot of things that UUP dump is unable to do. Here is a screenshot of the main menu just to illustrate some of the capabilities:

View attachment 115825

For this discussion, note menu item #1, to inject updates. That is the one that allows me to build an ISO of newer builds.

Also, menu item #15 is what I use to deploy Windows to a VHD. It simply automates the whole process for me, but it does exactly the steps that you would do manually.

Ah - I have a batch file that does some of the above. We have previously identified that using dism to install Windows 24H2 to a vhdx file works fine.

The issue we had was when booting from a usb drive created from a 24H2 iso, and used that to install windows to a vhdx file (noautattend files).

Is this tool of yours available for us to play with?

UUP is so slow creating 26100.2161!
I hope your script is more efficient.

EDIT - still fails to install .2161 from usb drive to vhdx with the new installer.

Previous installer works fine.

hsehestedt · Nov 10, 2024

cereberus said:
Ah - I have a batch file that does some of the above. We have previously identified that using dism to install Windows 24H2 to a vhdx file works fine.

The issue we had was when booting from a usb drive created from a 24H2 iso, and used that to install windows to a vhdx file (noautattend files).

Is this tool of yours available for us to play with?

UUP is so slow creating 26100.2161!
I hope your script is more efficient.

EDIT - still fails to install .2161 from usb drive to vhdx with the new installer.

Previous installer works fine.

Ahhh, I see. I missed the fact that it was when booting from a USB drive.

My program is available on hsehestedt - Overview

I'm not sure if mine is any faster. I would have to look into that. I suspect that it may be a bit quicker if you are updating one or two editions of Windows, but I have the flexibility to update any number of Windows editions and then automatically combine them all into one ISO image. You can even take Windows editions from multiple different ISO images and then combine them all into a single ISO image. With each update, I typically inject the update into all Windows editions in an ISO image (11 of them) + several images with drivers for my systems installed.

Also, to be completely transparent, mine requires some prep. You need to first download the Windows updates and arrange them in a prescribed folder structure.

Leon88 · Jan 1, 2025

sfernley said:
I've tried to install Windows 11 - 24H2 to a virtual disk VHD file. The installation gets to the end but then reports "Install Failed".

This worked ok on all versions earlier than 24H2. I wonder if it's a bug or intentionally blocked by Microsoft?

是个bug。
解决方案很简单！
点击"使用旧版安装程序"就行了。

essenbe · Jan 1, 2025

Leon88 said:
是个bug。
解决方案很简单！
点击"使用旧版安装程序"就行了。

Welcome to the forums. This is an English only site. If you need help you can use Google or Bing translator.

translated:
"It's a bug. The solution is simple! Just click on "Use Legacy Installer".

Bree · Jan 1, 2025

Leon88 said:
是个bug。
解决方案很简单！
点击"使用旧版安装程序"就行了。

essenbe said:
Welcome to the forums. This is an English only site. If you need help you can use Google or Bing translator.

translated:
"It's a bug. The solution is simple! Just click on "Use Legacy Installer".

Click to expand...

Yes. that was the solution given in post #25

Installing Windows 11 - 24H2 to a VHD or VHDX no longer works

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